Just a millennial trying to navigate adulting, mental health, and beauty as authentically as possible

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Blogger Recognition Award

Behind the Schmile has easily become one of my favorite blogs to read in the space of a few months, so thank you so so so much for nominating me! I really appreciate it. If you haven’t already visited behingtheschmile.com, please do. I’ve featured some posts in my “Blog Blast” posts if you want to see some of my personal favorites.

The birth of Courtenay’s Beauty Box

Do you know this name makes me cringe now? I have a new domain name in mind, and hope to roll that out along with a re-vamping of my site once I am able to self-host it. But this isn’t the place for that 🙂

I created this site back in November 2015. That was nearing the end of the fall semester of my Junior year if I am not mistaken. The beginning of that semester was great – I moved into sophomore housing with my best friend at the time, and we all had a pretty fun little clique going (#508C). That died out over time due to some shenanigans which I will say looking back, were petty and could have been handled a lot better at least on my end. With everything devolving in a slow crash and burn, my mental health was starting to take a nose dive. At this point, it wasn’t at its worst, but it was coming.

Prior to this, and even while in high school, I had taken a liking to YouTube, and beauty videos in particular. I found myself spending hours surfing the site, and watching my favorite YouTuber’s test out and review products. It brought me comfort, and also gave me something to practice. I was experimenting with makeup myself, hoarding products and playing around with my makeup routine. I’m not sure what spurred me to create a blog of all things (I think I thought about YouTube but realized I was completely too shy to do this – this is also why I am not consistent with mine), but I decided to make one.

I sat on the couch I our common area, selected my name, chose my theme, and voila! Originally, I focused on beauty related content, as that is what I felt most comfortable discussing. Now, I am trying to just share my thoughts as they come. Thinking back, I think I was hesitant to do that because of fearing what people thought. Now, I am trying to just share my growth and happenings in life.

Advice

I would tell those who are interested in blogging to write from the heart. There are so many posts out there and pieces of advice from other bloggers, some of whom are “successful,” that will talk about how important it is to find a niche and whatnot. I don’t disagree with this, especially depending on your purpose for blogging. I do also think that it is important to write about what you are rocking with. You’ll attract your tribe, and they’ll vibe with what you’re putting out so long as it is coming from a place of authenticity.

I would also say to never forget to interact with others. You will learn so much from other bloggers – how to write better, inspiration for posts, technical tips – if you engage. This doesn’t even have to take up much of your time! Engaging can be as simple as scrolling through your WordPress feed and reading a blog post or two and commenting, scrolling through IG to read a couple of posts/comment, and looking at posts people share on Twitter. That can take as little as 30 minutes of your day, and you can go back about your business.

An extra, where I am in full agreement with Tisha…don’t be ashamed of your work. I don’t know why I still do this, but I do not share my blog with my personal life. A select few people know about it, but my larger group of folks don’t. For instance, I don’t share my posts on my personal Facebook, nor did I share them on my personal Instagram. I have since started adding people on my blog Instagram, but again, the larger group of people I know do not interact with my blog, nor do I share it. I might have more supporters out there who I am just not reaching, but it is my own fear that is blocking that. Don’t be me lol.

Thanks for the nomination! Also, I definitely feel you on the sharing posts on your personal facebook thing! I’ve shared one post and my friends and family liked it well enough, but I rarely ever post about anything I’m generally doing in life, so it would be weird if I shared my own blog links there. There’s something about Instagram that just makes sharing blog stuff feel a bit more natural!